A forum for reviews of all aspects of popular culture (mostly movies).

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (book review)

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard (2015). I guess I will never tire of reading books about ancient Rome. This is a good one. It starts at the very beginning, examining the mythical founding stories of Romulus and Remus and the early dynasty of kings of Rome, and then marches up to the year 212 A.D. when emperor Caracalla made every free male inhabitant of the empire a Roman citizen. Beard doesn’t focus much on the big names of Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Caesar Augustus, but Cicero gets quite of bit of ink. Very readable, but I did get slightly irritated when Beard would interject little comments about how barbaric or how sexist some particular ancient practice seems by today’s standards. I didn’t really need her to prove her up-to-date sensibilities to me.